


Advanced Anger Management and Abandonment Issues

by SomeoneWillDieToday



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Feels, Gen, Sentimental, Shirley-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:53:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28031199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomeoneWillDieToday/pseuds/SomeoneWillDieToday
Summary: Shirley loves her family. She loves the Study group. But love changes.Or: A study of Shirley's relationship to the study group and her family.
Relationships: Andre Bennett/Shirley Bennett, Shirley Bennett & The Study Group
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	Advanced Anger Management and Abandonment Issues

**Author's Note:**

> Here is my probably awful contribution to the community fandom. I love Shirley and wanted more fics for her so here you go.

From a young age, Shirley was angry.

She wasn’t sure at what, exactly, or why, but she was. At first, she didn’t try to hide it. She chewed out the scrawny kid who was stealing her toys, she sent her little brother’s bully home with a tongue lashing as effective as a preschooler could give.

But then school started, and she soon realized that her anger put her in a box. People avoided her in the halls, her classmates didn’t let her join in on whatever the game of the day was. She was the “angry black girl”.

So she hid it. She channeled that anger into foosball. Every morning for four years, she went to that table at the local YMCA and practiced. She eventually gained challengers, which amassed a crowd and gave her a name: Big Cheddar. She didn’t bother correcting them. It was nice to have anonymity.

Until Jeff Winger came along.

Back then, she didn’t know him as Jeff Winger. He was the scrawny white kid that had challenged her to a game, and she had beat him to a pulp. Not literally of course, but you could tell from the kid’s expression that he was in comparable pain emotionally. And Shirley loved it. She kept pushing and pushing until…

He peed his pants.

The crowd erupted in cheers and laughs. Tears streamed down the kid’s face, and a wave of remorse hit Shirley like a tsunami. What had she done?

She never touched a foosball table after that.

In her teens, she discovered a new way to channel her anger: Passive-aggressiveness. All the other kids were doing it, whether to sound cool or maintain composure. So she took it up as well.

It worked like a charm. Not as effectively as foosball or expressing it, but good enough. But as it turns out, passive-aggressiveness gives you a reputation as well: a snob.

It was better than being an “angry black girl”, sure, but was it a label she wanted to have?

As it goes, it didn’t matter. In high school, she met Andre.

Andre didn’t care about her anger, he embraced it even. And Shirley had never been more grateful for someone in her life. They had an instant connection.

The year after graduation, they got married. It was a small ceremony, with only both their families accounted for. It was all she could ever ask for, and Shirley Anne Edwards became Shirley Anne Bennett.

When Andre went off to college, Shirley went with him. She got a job as a waitress at the local restaurant and waited. Waited for the love of her life to get out of college and start a business, waited to start a family.

It finally happened. They moved out of their stuffy apartment to a slightly bigger one in a new city, Greendale. Andre opened his stereo business, and their life officially started.

But it wasn’t all she had imagined. Not even close. Andre would come home from at night too tired to even talk to her before going to sleep. Those nights where he would take her in his arms and they would make love to the sound of the stereo’s downstairs playing became few and far between. Shirley began to wonder if there was possibly more to life than being a faithful and hard-working wife and mother.

Elijah was born in 2003. The birth went fairly smoothly, with minimal pain before the medication took it away completely. Her doubts all but vanished when she took her first child in her arms, marveling at how she had brought life into this world almost singlehandedly. How could she ask for more?

But then, the iPods came. It was gradual at first, a slight drop in sales. They didn’t even attribute it to iPods, since they had come out in 2001, and it was now three years later. Still, their sales began to go down, and they started having trouble affording all the things one-year-old Elijah needed. And with the addition of little Jordan into the family, providing was more expensive than ever.

After a while, the downturn in sales stopped. It even went up a little bit, surprisingly, and the family didn’t have to worry too much about affording things anymore, especially with Elijah a year into school and Jordan sure to follow. Shirley took over some of the business duties when Andre fell ill for a few days.

She felt oddly at home in the mess of finances and business jargon. It wasn’t hard to keep track of all their expenses for her. Not a bit. She enjoyed it even.

When Andre took over again, she felt a sense of loss, and that all-familiar anger began to come back.

She tried to hide it again, burying herself in her children’s lives. But eventually, it bubbled to the surface.

She didn’t believe it at first. After everything, how could he cheat on her? With a stripper, of all people?

But it was undeniable, and he left her with nothing but a broken heart and two bland orgasms to his name. The anger came through, spouting out of her like magma out of a volcano. She might have said some things she regretted to him, but he had brought it on himself.

She went to the ballroom for the first time that day.

She enrolled in Greendale Community college that year against her better judgment. She was going to stick it to him by getting a business degree and starting her own business. She got a baby sitter for Elijah and Jordan.

A few days in, a lanky student approached her, asking if she wanted to join a Spanish study group. She accepted, it would be a good thing to make friends after all.

The group consisted of seven people. Six extraordinary people who would change her life and Pierce.

Shirley saw that Jeff and Britta were going to get together from the beginning. It was a classic Sam and Diane, the couple that always bickered. She may or may not have gotten overly invested, but who could blame her? After Andre, her life had been sorely lacking in romance.

The group grew closer and closer. She began to consider them her family. That’s why, when Jeff decided to get in a fight on Christmas, she wouldn’t allow it.

She could tolerate them not being Christian. Hell, she could tolerate them not even acknowledging Christmas. But she couldn’t tolerate them doing something so dirty at a time she valued so much.

But they chose fighting over her; of course, they do. And she followed them and joined in because sometimes you have to sacrifice things for your family. She might have also enjoyed the fight just a little bit. It was the best Christmas she had in a while.

Despite everything, she and Pierce developed a grudging respect for each other. At least until he pantsed her.

She didn’t want to share a group with that man, ever again. They kicked him out. They moved on.

Until she found out that they had tried to get Pierce to apologize to her behind her back. They had betrayed her, just like Andre. They had had an affair with the whore that was Pierce Hawthorne. Her rage bubbled over. She quit the group.

Maybe she should have stayed out, moved on with her life. But Shirley Bennett wasn’t very good at moving on. Within a day she was back in. She went back to her grudging respect of Pierce for a little bit, at least.

Jeff and Britta’s relationship crashed and burned. That’s what you get for being too invested.

In November, Andre showed up at her door with a bouquet. He apologized, said he changed. Shirley didn’t necessarily believe him, but she didn’t need to. She just needed to believe he would stay. They reconnected that weekend.

The study group finds the pregnancy test in her bag. Britta, her usual abrasive self, berates her for not using protection and having a “double standard” like she would understand.

They found out she was a regular at the ballroom. She stormed out; they didn’t discuss it.

When Troy reveals that Shirley had sex with Chang, she shuts down. She couldn’t have done such a thing! She was a good, Christian woman. She didn’t have sex with any random person. Especially not Chang of all people.

Chang kept berating her. She couldn’t believe him. This was Andre’s child, whether biologically or not. She gave Jeff custody papers to get Chang to sign, which should be the end of the problem. But it was not.

Chang somehow escalated this to the point where he kidnaped two children. Leave it to him to make things insane. They don’t press charges, but he definitely wasn’t allowed to be with her child anytime soon.

She gave birth in the Anthropology classroom. It was the weirdest experience of her life. She didn’t remember much, only screaming, Britta somehow being helpful, and then having her child in her arms.

She felt as joyful as the first time. She named him Ben. Ben Bennett, what a funny name. The father was Andre, thank the lord.

After Jeff reveals to her that he was the boy she made pee that day, she hesitated to tell him she was Big Cheddar. Her hesitation might’ve been correct because he stormed out of the cafeteria and told her not to talk to him.

She shouldn’t have played foosball again. She had put that behind her for a reason. Now Jeff probably hates her.

They played another fateful game of foosball, anger radiating off of both of them until the ball fell in the middle. Neither of them wanted it. They both didn’t want to be the weak ones. Why do they need this game? This awful, terrible game?

They leave the germans at the table scrambling for the ball the next day.

Shirley got remarried to her husband in the library of Greendale. It wasn’t as perfect as the first time, but it didn’t need to be. She and Pierce presented their business pitch to the Dean. She and Andre decided it was time to be ok with change, whether or not they approved of that change. She knew this time it would last.

She got expelled from Greendale. They all do. But the study group stayed together. She held on to her new family like a lifeline. Her visits to the ballroom picked up again.

But it was fine. They went back to Greendale, they saved the Dean. Everything was fine.

A brief legal struggle with Pierce later, she was the owner of Shirley’s sandwiches, her own business.

She didn’t remember most of her fourth year. The gas leak really must’ve gotten to her. A failed thanksgiving party, some puppets, maybe some paintball? It was all really blurry.

Andre left her again. She cursed him, she cursed herself for giving him a second chance. She didn’t have the study group anymore. She held her children close, telling them that everything was going to be okay. She wasn’t so sure of that herself.

She went back to Greendale because it was all she had. It made her. She restarted Shirley’s Sandwiches and put her all into it. Business boomed and she was back on track.

But then Pierce died. She wasn’t too upset about that, it was inevitable, and he was old and never respected her. But Troy was leaving, and she was upset by that.

She hugs him goodbye(or rather, his clone) and cries a little. Another person was leaving her.

The rest of the group grew more exclusionary of her. Not inviting her to dinner was just one of the things they did to exclude her.

The new social ladder created by meowmeowbeanz was an opportunity. She quickly climbed to the top, using the influence she did have to get more. She felt in charge of her life again.

That ended as soon as it began. Typical.

She got the call at 11:30 pm. Just after finally putting a hyperactive Jordan to bed. Her uncle Martin was sick. She needed to come to take care of him.

She said goodbye to the study group a final time. She left Shirley’s Sandwiches to Britta. Hopefully, she would take care of it. More realistically, it would go bankrupt within the first week. That didn’t matter though, she needed to take care of her family. Maybe, she could start a real business there, with non-community-college-student customers.

She said a tearful goodbye to all of them at the airport before taking Ben by the hand and leaving with her children.

She got a job with a detective, helped him find his wife.

After all of it, she thinks she can move on.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Please leave kudos and comments if you liked it.


End file.
